Tsunami!!! or not...

Some (or most) of you may have received the following info via an email from Cameron, but I thought I would post it here, too. The whole day was pretty anti-climatic.....

"As many of you know there was an 8.8 earthquake off the coast of Chile. 50 years ago there was a 9.5 earthquake within about 100 miles of the same place and it caused a tsunami that killed 61 people in Hawaii and many more other places.

For whatever reason (and I'm sure there are several factors) this Tsunami has been pretty much a "bust". It has been very small and has done little or no damage to any of the Hawaiian Islands and no deaths (or even injuries from what I know so far).

There were much better warnings in place this time and we got prepared with lots of extra water, packed up backpacks in case we needed to evacuate and moved our car to higher ground.

Everyone here is safe and fine. Looks like it going to be another beautiful day here with temperatures around 80 degrees.

Lastly I got a new phone recently because I lost my old one and I ended up having to get a new phone number. Those of you who would like to know my new cell phone number please e-mail us and we'll send it to you.

Lisa "graduates" in April with her Elementary Education degree but doesn't actually finish her student teaching till the end of the kids school year which is in May. We will stay where we are until June 5th and then we probably will move to an off campus apartment until we can figure out if we will be actually able to start the North Shore Elementary Charter School that we wish to do.

o.k. I'm sure I've already written way more than most of you want to know so for now.....

Aloha!

The Hawaii Petersons"

So there you have it. (Thanks babe for having it all written out for me to copy over!) Hope that all of you are doing well, and that you fellow locals weren't too bored out of your gourd today - thank goodness for computer games and TV/movies or we all would have gone crazy. Luckily we didn't have to evacuate as we are in an upstairs apartment and the state deemed the evacuation today a "vertical" one, not "horizontal". However the kids were getting a little stir crazy since I wouldn't let them outside and they had to wear their socks and sneakers ALL day in case we had to leave the house - Trust me, that's not a fun task when they are used to running around in slippers (flip-flops for all you mainlanders) or bare feet all day.

Well, finally off to bed - today's fun began at 4 this morning!

We're in the news!

So as most of you know I'm doing my student teaching this semester. I'm working in a 4th grade classroom in the local area and it's so much fun.... OK, a lot of work, but really a lot of fun, most of the time. I think 4th grade is my limit though - they are already starting to get that older "tween" attitude that I just don't handle that well.

ANYWAY - we just got back from a fieldtrip today. It was actually a sleepover that started last night. We stayed at the Bishop Museum in town, checking out some of their exhibits and then sleeping up in the "Treehouse" which is conveniently located over the top of an artifical volcano. It was a lot of fun - and very exhausting. But this morning we had some time to kill before the bus was to pick us up for the nest leg of our trip and the museum staff asked if our class would be willing to play in the new, not yet opened Circus exhibit for a live news shoot they had this morning. And so we did! Check it out:



I have just a small cameo, but the kids had a ton of fun and we didn't have to sit out in the rain while waiting for the bus!

The rest of the trip was fun, too. We hit the Mission House Musuem and learned about how Hawaiian came to be a langage that was written in the 1800s (before that it was only spoken). It was pretty cool, too. Though I am glad to be home. And I'm also glad it's a 4 day weekend - we have a furlough Friday and Monday's a holiday - I'm a little tired of my not-always-such-good-listeners for now, but I'll be ready for them again bright and early Tuesday morning.